England fans don't deserve to be tarnished by tragic death

Wednesday 7 September 2011 10:11 BST

If you wanted to put together a case for English football being unreconstructed, violent and dumb, then you could do worse than simply collect the press cuttings from the last three England internationals.

On August 10, England's game against Holland was cancelled as London was systematically pillaged and burned by our own inhabitants and the Metropolitan Police admitted they did not have the resources to keep the peace at a major football match.

Next, last Friday, a few thousand England fans went to Sofia, to support the team in a Euro 2012 qualifier against Bulgaria. Neither set of fans covered themselves in glory. Some Bulgarian fans hooted like baboons when England's black players had the ball. Some English fans sang songs like 'Where's your caravan', 'Bulgaria is a s**thole' and, simply, 'Gyppo'.

Then, worst of all, came last night. Following England's turgid 1-0 Euro 2012 qualifier victory over Wales at Wembley, news broke of an incident that had taken place outside the away turnstiles before kick-off. As a result of that incident, a Welsh supporter in his forties was killed. Six other Welsh supporters were remanded in custody. You have to admit that, taken in the round, it looks pretty bad.

Now, in each of these cases, you can argue very forcefully that English football and England fans were not to blame.

Obviously, England supporters were not responsible for the riots that scotched the Holland game.

Furthermore, only an idiot minority in Sofia sang songs about gypsies s***ting in buckets, etc. Racism is a problem endemic across European football: a problem Uefa's suits refuse fully to admit or to tackle. (They are too busy, apparently, sitting in Nyon thinking up ever more condign punishments for Arsene Wenger.) It is by no means an English curse.

Finally, the indications are that the Wales fan's death was not caused by Anglo-Welsh rivalry, nor were any England fans arrested.

Nevertheless, for as long as problems of order and discipline attend England matches, the rest of the world will regard English football and the national team with narrowed eyes. Memories are long, and even if the nightmarish days of Heysel are behind us, the images of Belgian police turning the water cannon on England fans in Charleroi at Euro 2000 are only just over a decade old.

We'd like to think that when England play, the world watches. The truth, which we seldom admit to ourselves, may be that when England play, the world watches its back. Of course, this is wildly unfair on almost everyone who follows the England football team.

I was at Wembley last night. As I always do, I took the Tube to the stadium with fans of both teams. I walked down Wembley Way with the crowd. I took the Tube back home with them. I saw no trouble, heard no unusually offensive chants and felt no intimidating atmosphere. I was nowhere near the fatal incident and learned of it only via Twitter, after the match was over. It was a largely peaceful evening.

Of course, that is not to say that Wembley was a plane of good vibrations. It was a football match.

Before kick-off there were loud choruses of boos for both anthems. During Land Of My Fathers, Wembley took on a WWE arena flavour, as a number of England fans howled in derision and used giant foam hands to issue a thumbs down.

During God Save The Queen, the noisy Welsh travelling support reciprocated: waving flags, whistling, jumping up and down and generally offering their best impression of Owain Glyndwr giving Henry IV the bird.

And when Robert Earnshaw missed his simple chance to equalise for Wales, there were the same scornful catcalls that would rain upon any player making such a risible gaffe.

None of this felt surprising or even particularly distasteful. It was just the usual neighbourly cockmockery: "English w*****s! Sheep-s******g p****s!" There was no chance that England and Wales would choose the occasion of an international football match to begin respecting each other.

Yet in the light of the Welsh fan's death, English football now finds itself dogged by unwanted trouble. For all the efforts of players, fans, supporters' groups, the police and the football authorities, there is still danger lurking when England play.

The national team are now one point away from qualification for Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine. England need to be seen to have their house in order before all that begins. The vast majority of blameless, well-intentioned supporters deserve nothing less.